


Candles Levitating Over a Bear Trap and Other Nonsense

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tabletop Gaming, Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Is an Asshole, Explicit Sexual Content, Humour, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Role-Playing Game, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 18:26:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17986346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: Wherein everyone plays D&D, and Steve is an Angsty Ball of Uncertainties.(To be clear, no one asked for this.)





	Candles Levitating Over a Bear Trap and Other Nonsense

**Author's Note:**

> Whoever gets the reference in the title without Googling it gets a virtual cookie and the undying knowledge that we're equally dorky.

Steve is one hundred percent certain Billy Hargrove is a total troll and probably gonna be their downfall.

It fucking figures.

The dude says things like, _"You're such a moron. Seriously, Harrington, you're so fucking dumb sometimes, I swear to God."_ And, _"Fuck, you're not even that hot. Like, I'm so much hotter than you."_ Which, whatever, _rude_. But he says all that and more before dropping to his knees to take Steve into his mouth, so Steve doesn't take it too much to heart. At least it shuts him the fuck up, and, by the time Steve's come down his throat, he doesn't seem to have any words left.

"I'm gonna need you all to roll for initiative," Nancy says.

They hold their weekly game in Nancy's basement every Saturday night because they don't have lives anymore, apparently. They rarely leave before Sunday very late in the evening, and Steve always stays behind to help clean up. It's not because he's working up the courage to ask Nancy to whatever with him.

They're very much over, but they've never had The Talk, as Steve thinks of it in his head. Nancy had dumped him unceremoniously and a week later asked him to join in their weekly Campaign. So he stays after each time, perhaps perversely trying to mentally will Nancy into providing some form of closure. It's a bonus that it means he doesn't have to leave at the same time as the asshole he's started fucking basically out of self-defence. (There's only so much you can eye-fuck someone until you finally have to give in or self-combust.)

He can't even imagine how the fuck Hargrove ended up joining the party even before Steve knew such a thing even existed. He and Byers get on like a haunted house on fire, so basically in a weird-ass way which ultimately makes total sense. Steve doesn't want to get into how the guy gets on with everyone else at the table because his head is hurting already, thank you very much.

In a group full of utter weirdos, anger management rejects and complete enigmas, Steve still feels like the biggest outsider of them all.

Despite that, he has a propensity towards a statistically improbable number of natural twenty rolls, which, coupled with a penchant for in-game risk-taking, makes for more of an interesting evening than it would be without him at the table. He _thinks_. No one's confirmed or denied this theory yet. They haven't kicked him out for breaking character a dozen or more times per night to ask way too many rules-related questions either, so. Whatever is whatever.

"Natural twenty," he proclaims proudly, and they're off.

Billy's a Halfling Rogue, because of course, and keeps hogging the caramel popcorn whenever Steve's in battle. Steve doesn't _really_ like the caramel kind, but Nancy makes the best he's ever tasted because it's homemade. He's gonna throw down for that shit one day.

Billy is also maybe rolling badly on purpose at inconvenient times to intentionally screw with Steve. Like, that doesn't even make _sense_ , but he swears it's happening. Like, what the fuck? Steve calls shenanigans, even if only in his own head.

They break a little after ten, because playing non-stop for three hours straight is probably not conducive to a healthy game-playing environment. Steve figures that's mostly for Byers's benefit.

Last time Jonathan.exe stopped working in the middle of an innocent-seeming conversation about farming, Byers had left the table muttering _"I'm not playing fucking Catan again."_ Like, on a loop. For forty-five minutes. Nancy found him huddled between the sink and the tub frowning at the bath curtain like it had personally offended him. Like, what the fuck even.

So yeah. Healthy game-playing environment.

They scatter, but Steve's the only one to leave the basement. Once upstairs, he goes rummaging through the kitchen cabinets for the loaded potato skins Nancy used to get for him, and which he knows for a fact she hates, but hasn't made herself throw away yet. Barb won't touch them either, and generally stays out of Nancy's stuff anyway. She's also the only one of them who still has a social life outside of this house, so she can get her own potato skins if she wants them.

He finds what's very likely the last bag at the back of the highest cabinet, just in time for Robin to walk into the room, scare him half to death and have him stub his toe. It's even more embarrassing than it sounds.

"Oh, shit, sorry," she says, all contrite tone, reaching for him as if that'll fix the pain in his foot. Which is exactly when Billy walks in, because of course he fucking does.

He looks from one to the other blankly, then says, "Is this some sort of weird mating dance, or what?" Hopping around in pain in Nancy Wheeler's kitchen? Not Steve's best moment.

The thing is, Steve's pretty sure Billy and Robin are sort of fucking. Like, casually and shit, probably sort of like Steve and Billy are fucking, though for longer, if Steve's time-related math is right.

Funny thing is, Nancy asked Robin to join the Campaign at the same time as Steve when Robin walked in on them discussing strategy in the backroom and seemed genuinely interested in actual gameplay. Steve could vouch she's a much more rabid tabletop gamer than him, if not better at manning their ice cream stand at the front of the mall.

So, Robin from the mall. There's a How I Met Your Mother joke in there somewhere, Steve's always thought so. Billy kept calling her "freaky alternative girl" the first evening Steve ever attended, but she was just Robin by the following weekend, so, yeah, that's clearly happening. As in, they must be fucking, though Steve would rather avoid getting any sort of confirmation as far as that's concerned.

And Steve's not an asshole, all right? Two weeks later he and Billy finally reached boiling point on the sexual frustration, and Steve had stopped ten minutes in to clear the air, and maybe also to take a breather.

"What about Robin?" he'd asked, and Billy had said, "What about her?" And Steve had given him the most succinct response he could muster to encapsulate how much of an asshole he doesn't want to be by saying, "I just don't want her to get hurt."

Billy didn't take his lips too far away from Steve's jawline to say, "No one's getting hurt, princess. This is all casual, believe you me," and that was the end of that. Now Steve went over to Billy's three nights a week and never stayed over, but, as far as he knows, Robin probably doesn't stay over the other three either.

Which is also why Steve's glad he leaves Nancy's last. He likes having Mondays (better start to his week), Wednesdays (he sleeps in on Thursdays) and Fridays (it's not as if he had a social life anyway) as his nights to fuck Billy's shit up. Disrupting the schedule he's got going won't bode well for his penultimate semester, though next term will be Hell in a handbasket before it gets better. He just wants to make it to graduation in one piece, honestly.

"Steve just stubbed his toe," Robin is now saying. "It was my fault," she adds shyly. She sounds genuinely guilty about it.

And, look, Steve likes Robin well enough. She seems like a great girl and whatever. But shit could get real awkward if the three of them spend any more time on their own in a confined space, so Steve makes the executive decision to grab his potato skins and bounce while the situation has yet to hit critical mass.

He brushes past Billy in the doorway, who reaches out to clasp his arm snake-fast. It's a tight grip. Steve thinks it's going to escalate into… something. The Billy Hargrove Special most likely. But Billy only gives him an indecipherable look which swiftly turns mocking before letting him go.

Yeah, Billy Hargrove is definitely a fucking weirdo, too.

He goes back downstairs with his spoils, where Nancy's showing Byers something on her phone. Their heads are close together and Steve sort of… yearns. Not for Nancy necessarily, or for whatever's happening with Jonathan, but more for what could have been.

He breaks into the bag, although he feels oddly not that hungry anymore. He maybe shouldn't have left Hargrove and Robin alone in the kitchen they all share, now that he thinks about it. Saturday is Gaming Night, after all, so, like, that'd be super-inappropriate. He absently takes a bite and ignores whatever's happening in his gut.

It's whatever.

**Author's Note:**

> Last time I did the whole chaptered WIP thing was back in 2004. Let me enjoy change at my own pace.
> 
> Fyi, this is proving to be loads of fun to write, and I don't expect anyone to like this as much as I like it and like writing it, so we're cool.
> 
> ETA April 28th '19: I'm sort of back on [this Hellsite](https://rhubarbdreams.tumblr.com/). If you wanna chat or whatever. I'm **always** on Discord, tho'. Add me @ Highsmith#6255 if you are so inclined.


End file.
